a flimsy excuse
by itsvolcanoday
Summary: Rachel Berry has everything she's ever wanted: her high school sweetheart, success on Broadway, the perfect life. But, even now, she falls back into the boy who has always had a stronger hold on her than she could admit.


So I'm not really sure where this came from - particularly considering I haven't written fanfiction in seven or eight years - but the Puckleberry bubble on tumblr has apparently inspired me and encouraged me enough to give this a shot. Thanks a ton to Crystal and Shelley for looking over it for me. Right now it's just a one-shot, but they're trying to get me to extend it into a multichapter - so I'm not sure which way I'll go with it. But yes. Thanks for reading!

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><p>When she opened her eyes to see the unfamiliar expanse of a damp, yellowed ceiling, she couldn't help but feel like a teenager again.<p>

She glanced around the room in which she found herself. There were posters hanging on the walls like the remnants of teenage hipsters, but they were interspersed with small mementos which she knew carried significances far beyond their years. The flannel sheets enveloping her felt warm against her naked skin, caressing her with a softness she never felt from her own linens.

And then there was the arm draped gently around her waist, pressing her into the long, hard body of a man she hadn't expected, hadn't known since she was a teenager.

Slowly she tried to extricate herself from his grasp, sliding further away from him on the bed and trying to raise his arm – a beautiful, muscular arm, she noticed – from her waist; but with her small movement, he suddenly came to life, it seemed, and he easily pulled her back against him, curving her body into his and resting his fingertips just below her breasts. There was a comfort, a care in that action she didn't expect, and for a moment it caught her off guard, throwing away her plans of modesty and propriety, and she almost snuggled back into his mass. But with that thought came the first prick of tears, and with more determination she finally lifted his arm, climbed out of his bed, and began picking up the clothes strewn throughout the room.

She made quick work of herself, throwing on the clothes from yesterday, straightening them out as best as she could, wiping away the smudges of the smoky makeup she had so carefully applied the night before. She stared into the mirror at herself, in the bathroom of his run-down but cared-for apartment, and watched as the guilt began weighing down the light in her eyes. She snatched her purse from door, and couldn't help just one more look at his sleeping form, peacefully turned towards the side of the bed she had occupied, with a ghost of a smile upon his lips. With a bitter twist of her lips, she walked quickly out of the apartment and out onto the streets of New York.

There was something calm and refreshing about the cold air biting at her throat, and she took a moment to revel in the city she loved. She made it. After so many years of idolizing and fantasizing and aspiring, she finally made it. And when a bus passed with a billboard screaming her name, she couldn't help but beam brightly into the night.

She had gotten everything she wanted. She was the star of her high school glee club and every dance and vocal group she had been a part of since then, and she led her team to win Nationals her senior year. She had dated the most popular, the sweetest, the nicest guy in school, and they fell in love despite all the odds. When they had gotten back together for their senior year, she had expected to leave him behind when she sped off to New York to pursue her dreams; but he had grown, had changed for her, and he followed her. One year later, they were married, and now, two years after that, she was headlining her first Broadway production, and he was pursuing a degree in music education. She had gotten everything she wanted.

Until he called.

That's all it took, she thought, as she trudged through the concrete blocks and sharp lights of the city. One call to change everything. Her husband played the voicemail for her – "Dude, I know we haven't talked much and shit, but I got a job in New York so I guess I'll be moving up there soon. So call me or something." – and that was it.

He called their apartment a week later, and she picked up. Their conversation didn't consist of much more than "Hey, Berry! Haven't heard that sweet voice of yours in a while." and "Hey, Noah. Did you want to talk to Finn?" and – was that a hint of disappointment? – "Yeah, is he there?" She passed the phone to her husband casually, and she tried to ignore the little thrill running through her stomach from hearing the gravelly tones of his voice.

A few days later he called again. She glanced at the name beaming from the phone's display, and picked up quickly with what she thought was a bit too much of a smile in her voice. "Hi, Noah. How are you?"

"Hey, babe. I'm okay, just trying to figure out all this moving shit. I mean, who knew moving across the country would be so damn hard?"

She giggled. "Well, I could have told you that. I've already done it, remember?"

"Stop bragging," he complained lightly, and she felt herself burst into a grin. "Come on, I bet it wasn't so easy when you first got there, huh?"

"Oh you know me, Noah," she teased. "I'm prepared for anything and everything. Nothing can shake me up too badly."

"Oh, you say that, Rach," he said, the rough edge of voice taking a darker tone, and – perhaps in anticipation of what he would say next – she felt it run over her cheek like glass. But he stayed quiet somehow, and the silence stretched before them awkwardly until she ran to pass the phone to her husband.

It kept going like that for a while. He could call, wanting to talk to his best friend, but she seemed to always answer the phone and they always spoke a few extra minutes before she passed the phone on. After that first conversation, it was over light-hearted things, nonsense, jokes and stories about their lives; nothing to bring up their past, nothing to fill their moments with silence.

Then a few weeks later he began to call when her husband was in class, when he should know he was in class. Their conversations stretched longer and longer, from those few minutes into fifteen into thirty. At first she believed that he just forgot the time, that he was getting her husband's schedule mixed up even if it was fairly simple. But by the fifth or sixth time, she finally blurted out, "Why are you calling now? Finn's not going to be home for another two hours, at least."

And he quietly responded, "I didn't want to talk to Finn."

She could feel the deep pink of a blush spreading over her cheeks, and, as was becoming her tradition, she curled up in the corner of her couch, laid her head against the armrest, and told him how her day was and asked about his. She had gotten used to this, just talking to him, telling him the things she used to tell her husband about her day and her job and her thoughts and her dreams; and she had gotten used to hearing about his life, his day, his pornographic thoughts and crude opinions and expletive-filled stories which never failed to make her laugh. She had gotten so used to it that she missed when it became the best part of her day.

Two months after he first called, she and her husband helped him get settled into his new apartment. It was a fourth-floor walkup in a dingy building, rusted and edged with rot, and she tried her best not to wrinkle her nose at the peeling wallpaper and the yellowed carpet as she unpacked cardboard boxes in his living room, and when he saw her disgust shine through he only barked his laughter and wrapped an arm around her shoulders in a quick hug. She tried to ignore how she blushed at his touch.

Now that he was in the city, now that he was spending time with her husband again and that he was back to working a full time job, she expected the calls to stop. There wasn't a reason anymore, she thought, now that he was moved into the city and establishing a life here. It stung a bit to think she would miss her now daily calls him, but her conscience, which had started to scream at her to talk to her husband and avoid her ex-boyfriend, quickly took to the idea.

But she was wrong. He called as often as ever, only now on her cell phone, and he even began texting her. In the middle of the day, she would find "got 2 tell u later bout this bitch who just came in" and "how u doin babe?" on her phone, and she could feel her lips bursting into a grin involuntarily. It felt a bit more wrong, a bit more sordid now that he was hidden on her cell phone; but he has become one of her best friends. He was the one she called when she found an unnoticed but delicious Thai restaurant – "I'll have to take you there sometime"; he was the one she called when she found an abandoned kitten outside her apartment building – "Berry, what are you doing? Shit, Finn's going to kill you but if you're going to take her in just take her"; he was the one she texted when she found out about her role in _Beauty and the Beast_ – "congrats! so proud of u."

So when she and her husband got into yet another huge fight – another which she was sure woke up their neighbors from the screams and the crashes and the broken glass – when she charged out onto the streets crying and hurt and frustrated, it seemed only logical that she called him, that she went to his apartment, that they took a few shots of whiskey. And, with her mind hazed with alcohol and emotion, with the soft red of his mouth tempting her with every word falling from his lips, with the rough texture of his voice pulling her further into him, with his ragged breath caressing her cheek like silk, with his "I've waited so long for this" and his "I want you," it seemed only logical that she fall into his bed.

Stalking through the streets of New York, she twisted her wedding ring around her finger – the ring she never bothered to remove – and bowed in shame at each neon light hitting her face. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks, but she didn't know how to stop them.

It ran through her head again and again, the broken record of her failures. She had broken her marriage vows, betrayed the man she loved, gone against everything she had promised and everything she believed in. While her husband, the beautiful, sweet, innocent man she had grown up with, had watched grow from a small-minded boy to a man moving to New York with her, had slept comfortably in the apartment they had picked out to raise a family in, she had sex with someone else. She could feel the guilt crawling over her skin, and her sobs racked harder through her body.

And he had cheated on him with his best friend – again. She was back in the triangle she had started when they were teenagers, when she first used him against her then-boyfriend. She remembered why she had done that, the desperation, the angst. She had felt that when she first woke up and realized where she was, the desperation of wanting something she couldn't have, the loneliness of never reaching her goals, the neediness of teenage dramas. She could remember that young, lonely girl from her junior year of high school, and she hated herself for bringing her back.

From the corner of her eye she could see how she looked, stumbling down Manhattan streets, mascara still smearing under the weight of tears she couldn't remember how to stop.

It was late when she arrived back at the apartment she shared with her husband, twisted her key quietly in the lock and stepped into the stylish suite she had painstakingly decorated herself. She quietly crept into her bedroom, changed into one of her most comfortable and most modest nightgowns, and slid into bed next to her husband, wiping her eyes furiously to remove any sign of her tears.

She felt the guilt settle even more heavily in her stomach as she lay next to her husband, and she quickly promised herself she would never see him again. No more phone calls, no more text messages, no more sudden visits to his apartment in the middle of the night. She had everything she wanted, and she wasn't going to risk losing it, so she was going to go back to being the faithful wife she had always wanted to be and turn all her passion towards the man who bought her a too-expensive diamond only two years ago.

But when he felt her weight on the bed and murmured questioningly, when she shakily answered, "Sorry, I was out with the girls and lost track of time," and he merely rolled over and returned to sleep, she couldn't help but wonder what another man would have said at such a flimsy excuse.


End file.
